Trauma theory in Sándor Ferenczi’s writings of 1931 and 19321

The author states that it is Ferenczi ’s writings of 1931 and 1932 that exhibit the most conspicuous departures from Freud ’s ideas and at the same time contain Ferenczi ’s most original contributions. The texts concerned – Confusion of tongues between adults and the child ( Ferenczi, 1932a ), the Clinical Diary ( Dupont, 1985 ), and some of the Notes and fragments ( Ferenczi, 1930–32 ), all of which were published posthumously – present valuable and original theories on trauma which are significant not only in historical terms but also because the ideas concerned are relevant to our conception of clinical psychoanalysis today. The aim of this paper is to give an account of Ferenczi ’s trauma theory as it emerges from his writings of 1931–32 and to specify the points on which he differs from Freud.     

THE JUNG-FERENCZI DOSSIER

The acquaintance between Sándor Ferenczi and C G Jung pre-dates their first encounter with Sigmund Freud. Later, a triangular relationship developed when the three men crossed the Atlantic together and spent an extended period in one another’s company. Ferenczi’s friendship with Jung could not survive the latter’s break with Freud, but its development between 1907 and 1913 is evidenced by unpublished letters from Jung to Ferenczi, found in the Ferenczi Archive, now at the Freud Museum.     

Ferenczi and Freud – From psychoanalysis as a “professional and personal home” to the creation of a “psychoanalytic home” for the patient1

Abstract

The author explores the relationship between Sándor Ferenczi and Sigmund Freud in the light of their correspondence. This allows us to see how Freud was able to offer and create for Ferenczi a “professional and personal home” that enabled the latter to find a much more meaningful and creative contact with himself. According to the author, this experience played an important role in Ferenczi’s later readiness to offer to and create with his patients a similar “psychoanalytic home.” As Freud was not able to share such clinical research work with Ferenczi, a conflict developed between them whose nature has occupied psychoanalysts ever since, and whose seeds can be found in the 1246 letters that they exchanged between January 1908 and May 1933. From this point of view, Ferenczi’s Clinical diary (written in 1932 and published only in 1985) can be seen as the continuation of the dialogue they had entertained for so many years, as well as Ferenczi’s attempt not to give up the “professional and personal home” that they had created together.     

Fresh old news from Ferenczi about the function of dreams: The dream as a Kur,as a treatment and as a Gyógyászat

This article discusses a text on the function of dreams and their relation to trauma. Ferenczi intended to present this material as a talk at the 12th International Congress of Psychoanalysis, which was to take place in Interlaken, Switzerland the same year that he wrote it (1931). The entire conference, however, was postponed, and parts of this communication’s content appeared in other texts in which Ferenczi rethinks the concept of trauma and its clinical significance. In the present article the author makes use of the Freud/Ferenczi correspondence to contextualize Freud’s Hungarian follower’s originality regarding his theorizations about different aspects of the function of dreams. In the 1931 speech, as well as in this article, Ferenczi used a patient’s dream work as a clinical example of a process in which traumatic experiences and unmastered sensory impressions can be repeated to achieve a better working‐through for the dreamer. The process Ferenczi describes resembles an effort of self‐treatment, of self‐Kur.     

Sándor,Gizella, Elma: A biographical journey1

In recent years, particularly with the publication of the Freud‐Ferenczi correspondence, it has become clear that the rich theoretical dialogue between Freud and Ferenczi, a dialogue that may be seen as constitutive for psychoanalytic discourse in recent decades, was intensely intertwined with their complex personal relationship. Two women‐Gizella Pálos, who eventually became Ferenczi's wife, and her daughter Elma, who was both Ferenczi's and Freud's analysand, and with whom Ferenczi fell in love‐played a crucial role in shaping the Freud‐Ferenczi relationship. Their own voices, however, have so far been barely heard. This paper is a preliminary report of a biographical research project which aims to complete the puzzle, by getting to know better Gizella, Elma and their family, with the help of numerous original sources, many of them unpublished till now. The emerging picture tends to confirm Ferenczi's initial view of Elma as a person of depth and integrity, rather than Freud's view of her as fundamentally disturbed; countertransference‐love, it is suggested, may have facilitated fuller perception rather than clouding it. The question of the impact of Elma's ‘confusion of tongues’ with Ferenczi and with Freud on her subsequent life is also discussed.     

Sándor Ferenczi und der Institutionskonflikt der Psychoanalyse

By the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association by Freud, Jung and Ferenczi the “psychoanalytic movement” joined into regulated tracks. Thus, the project “Psychoanalysis”, a project in the spirit of the “Aufklärung”, which had prescribed itself to individualistic autonomy, got into breach. In this contribution the reasons are reflected in regard to the establishment as non-university science and the threat of marginalization. They objected Freud’s pretension of influence and belonging. It is unclear why it was explicitly Sándor Ferenczi who was designated to be the precursor of that foundation. He was initially a critical opponent of Freud’s thoughts. His biography illustrates that the institutionalization of psychoanalysis happened too early and that this brought scientific isolation and personal distress over his life when, at the end of his life, he strived for emanzipation in his relationship to Freud.     

The adventurous emigration of the Ferencziana: Contribution to their history

Abstract

This article retraces the long winding path followed by important documents on and by Freud and Ferenczi, first crossing the European continent in the flames of war and other horrors, and later being hosted by several cities. Eventually, after Judith Dupont's gift of her Paris archives to the Freud Museum in London in 2013, the collection of papers donated by Enid Balint to the custody of this author and kept for two decades in Geneva was finally deposited in the Archives of the British Psychoanalytical Society, also in London. Some other details and anecdotes of this long trip are also evoked.     

The Freud–Ferenczi dialogue after the formulation of the Second Topic

The author proposes to examine the scientific dialogue established by Freud and Ferenczi between 1920 and 1933 after Freud’s formulation of the Second Topic, the Pleasure Principle. It is very informative to explore the closeness of some formulations of Freud with the more important clinical and metapsychological intuitions of Ferenczi. The role of repetition, the value of affects, the second theory of anxiety, the elasticity of the psychoanalytical technique and the problem of traumatism are some of aspects developed in this paper.

     

Trauma and the Unconscious: Double Conscience,The Uncanny and Cruelty

Relatively little has been written on the role of trauma in conceptions of the unconscious. This paper explores Freud’s conceptions of the unconscious, comparing his ideas with the original French notion of “double conscience” and exploring their implications for technique. Whereas Freud’s concept of the unconscious mainly depends upon a theory of internal drives, Ferenczi’s ascribed a central role to trauma, shifting the focus to the individual in the context of relationships. The comparison is illustrated with a case history.     

Raised in the world of psychoanalysis: an interview with Judith Dupont

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis - This interview with Dr. Judith Dupont contains her reminiscences and thoughts about two topics of importance for the historiography of psychoanalysis....     

Empathy,Tact and the Freedom to be Natural

This paper explores the concepts of tact and empathy in the context of the Freud–Ferenczi correspondence around Ferenczi’s “The Elasticity of Psycho-Analytic Technique” paper. It goes on to explore the problems that they encounter in the neighborhood of reconciling science and subjectivity, in relation to the work on personal knowledge of the Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi and concludes with some implications for psychoanalytic training.     

The brunhilde fantasy freud's countertransference in the analysis of elma

Abstract

The authors start from the hypothesis that there existed a “blind-spot” in Freud's countertransference in his analysis of Elma, an ex-patient of Sandor Ferenczi. In their search for support for this idea, they review the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi contemporary to Elma's treatment in addition to works by Freud on theory and technique. They believe to have found therein several facts which support the above idea: for instance, the diagnosis of “dementia praecox” that Freud formulated in his first interview with the patient; and some of the vicissitudes of the treatment, in particular, the circumstances which determined its termination. The Brunhilde fantasy, which Freud attributes to Elma in a letter to Ferenczi, enables them to penetrate further the possible relationship between this “blind-spot” and details of Freud's life and childhood as revealed in his self-analysis.     

Trauma and healing: from ‘furor sanandi’ to ‘animus sanandi’

In his last period (1928–33), Ferenczi tried to complement the ‘negative’ technical principles first introduced by Freud in the 1910s. He introduced diverse and successive ‘positive instructions’, and specific techniques known as ‘elastic’ of ‘relaxation and neocatharsis’, and also made an unsucessful attempt to introduce ‘mutual analysis’. These techniques are implemented around a series of new technical principles including ‘tact’, ‘empathy’, ‘indulgence’, ‘intense sympathy’. All of these positive technical principles and innovations demonstrate the importance of considering the dimension of ‘healing’ in all analytic experiences and the importance of the analyst's functioning as the ‘healer’. The emphasis on the use of these new technical principles is consistent with the emphasis Ferenczi places upon countertransference and traumatic factors in psychopathogenesis.     

弗洛伊德的得意门生——亚伯拉罕和费伦茨对精神分析发展的贡献

亚伯拉罕和费伦茨都是弗洛伊德的早期弟子,他们在精神分析早期理论以及治疗技术的创新和发展中都有着重要的贡献。亚伯拉罕重新划分了弗洛伊德的心理性欲发展阶段并探讨了前俄狄浦斯期的母子关系,这都深深影响了后来的客体关系学派;费伦茨发展了弗洛伊德的性诱惑理论并在治疗技术上做出了许多革新,这为精神分析后来的发展开辟出了更广阔的道路。     

A controversy between Freud and Ferenczi and beyond

Abstract

With the aid of passages of Ferenczi's paper on elasticity, and of the correspondence between Freud and Ferenczi, the author points out the conceptual difference between Freud and Ferenczi, evokes the historical roots of this difference, and highlights its continuing importance in present-day psychoanalysis.     

Walking the Tightrope of Emotional Dwelling

This essay seeks to characterize an active, relationally engaged form of therapeutic comportment called emotional dwelling. Distinctive features of this mode of comportment are identified by contrasting it with corresponding formulations appearing in other theoretical viewpoints, including those of Freud, Ferenczi, Sullivan, and Kohut. Central in emotional dwelling is the therapist’s capacity to enter into a patient’s reality even while simultaneously holding to his or her own.     

The Environment of Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary

The author evokes the tragic death of Ferenczi’s colleague and analysand Dr. Elisabeth Radó-Révész in 1923. She died of pernicious anemia, the same illness that ended the life of Ferenczi 10 years later, at age 59. Can this be a tragic coincidence? Following notes in Ferenczi’s Clinical Diary, the author considers the deep disappointments both Ferenczi and Radó-Révész had experienced and explores some of the Tragic Man qualities of Ferenczi.     

Ferenczi and Groddeck: Simpatico

Sigmund Freud introduced Sandor Ferenczi to Georg Groddeck in 1917. The warm personal friendship that these two men shared for the rest of their lives was a breeding ground for many of their respective theoretical and clinical contributions. 1923 was a schismatic year in the history of psychoanalysis. Freud's appropriation of Groddeck's Das Es and its adaptation to Heinroth's tri-partite model (Freud, 1923; Poster, 1997) marked the beginning of Ego psychology. Almost simultaneously there appeared Groddeck's Book of the It (Groddeck, 1923), together with Rank and Ferenczi's The Development of Psychoanalysis (Rank and Ferenczi, 1924), and Ferenczi's Thalassa (Ferenczi, 1924). These three seminal publications set the stage for a paradigm shift (Hoffer, 2008; Rudnytsky, 2002). They were the forerunner of later developments in object relations, self-psychology, interpersonal and relational psychoanalysis. Taken together, the contributions of Groddeck and Ferenczi and Rank reinvigorated psychoanalysis, Freud's baby, with “the constructive aspect” that Groddeck told Freud had been lost in Freud's re-definition of Das Es (Groddeck, 1977, p. 13). Each of these pioneers stimulated the thinking of the others. Always an independent thinker, Groddeck was welcomed into the psychoanalytic circle by both Freud and Ferenczi. Suffering under the “crushing paternal(ism)” of Freud, Ferenczi was supported by Groddeck to carry out his own clinical experiments. Preoccupied with his own legacy and intolerant of dissent, Freud was able to maintain cordial contact with these two creative spirits and allow them to modify his own ideas.